Here are four Apple updates you may have missed

If you tuned in to Apple’s latest event, you know about the iPhone SE and smaller iPad Pro. But apart from these announcements, there are a few things you may have missed!Hitesh Raj Bhagat | ET Bureau | March 24, 2016, 07:52 IST

If you tuned in to Apple’s latest event, you know about the iPhone SE and smaller iPad Pro. But apart from these announcements, there are a few things you may have missed

NEW IOS 9.3 FEATURESOne of the big new features is Night Shift. Studies have shown that too much screen time in the evening can disrupt sleep. Making the display show warmer colours (cutting out the blue light can help reduce this effect).

Apps like f.lux and Night Owl already do this and now it’s a built in feature in iOS. If you head to Settings > Display & Brightness, you’ll find the Night Shift option. You can schedule it with a start and end time, manually enable it and even choose how warm you want the display to get.

Next up, there are many new 3D Touch shortcuts. The hardware-enabled 3D touchscreen on the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are still unique in the industry and it’s good to see that more shortcuts are popping up. If you’ve already updated your 6S to iOS 9.3, you can hard press on the Settings icon, Weather, App Store, Health and Compass to see some extra shortcuts.

Typically, these will save you a few taps - though you still can’t manually customise them. The Notes app has also been revamped — a note can now be secured with a password and your fingerprint. Once you create a note, click the share button and click Lock Note to secure it. You can have notes with personal or bank/credit card information.

Finally, there’s a new feature that lets you share Live Photos as stills. If you look at the image gallery and open a Live Photo, you can click the share button and then click Duplicate. Here you’ll see the option to just share it as a still photo.

WHAT’S NEW WITH TVOS

Apple thinks that apps are the future of TV and the 4th gen Apple TV is a step in that direction. The device runs on a modified version of iOS called tvOS. With the latest update, Apple has added features like folders, Siri dictiation, support for Bluetooth keyboards and support for your iCloud photo library (so that you can view your photos on the big screen quickly).

Siri dictation is interesting because you can also use it for text entry in case of usernames and passwords. In password fields, you will have to dictate each letter individually while specifying lower/upper case (or number and special characters, as the case may be).

MORE APPLE ACCESSORIES

The smaller iPad Pro needs a keyboard too, so there’s a new smaller version of the Smart keyboard folding case. It uses the Smart Connector like the larger version but both sizes are not interchangeable.

Next up, the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter. This can be used to offload photos from your digital camera to the iPad. It was mentioned that the 12.9-inch iPad Pro supports transfers at USB 3.0 speeds while the 9.7-inch iPad Pro will support USB 2.0 speeds.

The Lightning to SD card lets you plug in an SD card for transfers to the Photos app. The Lightning to USB type C cable will let owners of 12-inch MacBooks connect iPhones and iPads for data transfer/sync.

Finally, in addition to a drop in price of the Apple Watch (no update if this translates to all marets yet), there are some new sport band colours (yellow, apricot, royal blue), a Space Black Milanese Loop and new woven nylon bands in multiple colours (gold/royal blue, royal blue, gold/red, pink, black, pearl, and scuba blue).

IMPROVEMENTS TO THE IPAD LINE-UP

Since Apple is positioning the iPad Pro has a computer replacement, it makes sense to offer variants with a huge 256GB. Previously, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro maxed out at 128GB but with this new launch, both Pro versions will have 256GB as an option. This also means it’s quite likely that we’ll see a 256GB option in the next iPhone.

Another new feature is the True Tone display – it uses light sensors to detect the amount and colour of the light in the room and changes the display accordingly. This means, the display can automatically change colour temperature in order to display accurate colour. If you don’t like it, this can be switched off. Finally, there’s a new Classroom app by Apple (iPad only) for teachers and students. Used in conjunction with Apple’s educational tools, it allows the teacher to monitor student progress, lock screens to a single app, use AirPlay and so on.

LIAM THE ROBOT

The event spoke a fair deal about sustainability and recyclable materials. To further this cause, Apple has Liam — a recycling robot for iPhones. Liam can take apart iPhones and safely remove all components. What Apple showed in the keynote video (and what you see in the photo) is not a true representation of Liam.

As Mashable recently reported after a closer look at Liam, “Liam is actually a large-scale robot, with 29 freestanding robotic arms at various skill stations.” Unlike traditional recycling that can often rip a product into shreds, Liam carefully takes apart the device while preserving things like screws, SIM trays, batteries and cameras. Metals can be separated at the first stage itself. It’s a conscious effort to address environmental concerns and is possibly something that will add to the feel-good factor for existing owners.

Separately, RCom initiated contempt proceedings in the apex court against the Department of Telecommunications, blaming it for delaying a spectrum sale that would have enabled dues to be paid to Ericsson and lenders.